Scheduled for testing next month, MIT's much-anticipated laptop has climbed in …

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Update: It looks like the branding is evolving as rapidly as the hardware. MIT media lab faculty member and OLPC project participant Walter Bender replaced every instance of "CM1" in the OLPC wiki with 2B1, the same name used by a tax-exempt non-profit organization founded by Dimitri and Nicholas Negroponte in the '90s. The 2B1 Foundation was re-launched earlier this month with little notice from the press. Sources within the OLPC project have confirmed the 2B1 branding change, but it hasn't yet been officially announced.

With a 500-unit field test ready to begin in September, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program has announced that the much-anticipated, now-$140 laptop will be called Children's Machine 1 (CM1). Although MIT failed to reach the $100 price point, the Linux-based laptop is a remarkable achievement. Manufactured by Chinese hardware company Quanta, the rugged, portable computer features a 400mhz AMD Geode processor (the original prototypes had a 366mhz processor), 128MB of DRAM, built-in wireless support, and 512MB of flash memory for internal storage.

In addition to a faster processor, the CM1 sports several other new features not found in the original prototypes, including an SD card slot, microphone and speaker jacks (potentially for rumored VoIP support), and a digital camera capable of capturing video and still images (the drivers are actively being developed by Jonathan Corbet of Linux Weekly News). Technical details regarding the 8" LCD screen have also been released, and despite the initial skepticism of the naysayers, the folks at MIT have hit a home run. The display will feature 1200x900 resolution. In a statement on the OLPC web site, project chairman Nicholas Negroponte reveals that the CM1 display "has higher resolution than 95 percent of the laptop displays on the market today, approximately one-seventh of the power consumption, one-third of the price, sunlight readability, and room-light readability with the backlight off."

Tremendous progress has been made this summer on the Sugar user interface system that will be shipped with the CM1. Funded by Google through the Summer of Code (SoC) initiative, intrepid college student Erik Pukinskis has collaborated with the GNOME development community to adapt AbiWord for use with the portable Linux system. Although still experimental, AbiWord has successfully been integrated into the Sugar environment. Artists and developers continue to work on the evolving Sugar interface, and the fruits of their labor can be seen in demoes, mockups, and design reviews. Those interested in the interface development process can learn more by reading the Sugar development mailing list.